Monday, June 15, 2015

LONGEST. WEEK. EVER. Last Monday feels like ages ago, seriously. Time makes no sense when you're a missionary. :)

There are a lot of things I could say right now so I'll just get to the point with our investigators first! Diana is doing awesome. She's taking her time with everything so we've decided to push back her baptismal date but she's determined to figure out if this is the
right path for her to take. We talked to her about the Spirit and His role in helping us receive guidance in our decisions. We're hoping she'll recognize her answer when it comes, which it will.:)

Franca came with us to a lesson for the FIRST time since she got baptized!! We brought her to see Mary and honestly, Franca was SO cool the whole time. Mary won't accept the Book of Mormon and right in the middle of one of her rants Franca told her to just give the Book of Mormon a chance. And she continued on to say that she's gotta make time for it and pray and ponder about it if she wants to know for herself if it's true or not. Mary was quiet and in the end... SHE ACCEPTED A COPY OF THE BOOK OF MORMON. WOW!

I was not prepared for that. Best day ever.

Bertina read a couple chapters of 1 Nephi (the first book in the Book of Mormon) with us this week. It was great! Her kids were being crazy and her little daughter kept freaking out and screaming her head off over every little thing but she was still able to focus and reflect
on the things we had read. It was really awesome. She wanted to come to church but something came up and she couldn't come anymore... So
we'll just have to try again this week.

We visited some members this week so that's really fun! And we had a FANTASTIC weekend. On Saturday we did our gesso again and honestly I wasn't looking forward to it because our morning had been rough and I was tired and frustrated. But while Sorella McPheters and Anziano Pace were drawing on our sheet Anziano Matiaco and I went on splits and talked to people in the park. I was pretty sure nobody would want to talk to us but man, was I wrong. We talked to some crazy old men (they were cute though) but the best people we talked to were the last two. One of them is Ivan. He grew up in Italy but he's Slavic. Anziano Matiaco started talking to him and we found out that he's not really sure
what he believes in, that he's really confused and hopes that after he
dies he'll find out the truth. Well that's why God made missionaries, cuz you can know that stuff NOW! :D We were so pumped to talk to him! He asked a lot of questions and we taught him the Restoration and he accepted a Book of Mormon AND traded numbers with the anziani because he wants to learn more. IN. SANE. I was so happy. But it didn't stop there. While we were talking to him one of his friends came by (he
had been biking around and came within two inches of destroying me and
Anziano Matiaco while we were talking to three grandpas and one of them swore at him hahaha) and recognized us because he'd talked to some anziani in the past and he said he's really catholic but he has a high esteem of the missionaries. He suggested that we go down by the hospital to
a recovery center for people suffering from addictions and talk to them because a lot of them are struggling with finding a purpose and they just need some hope in their lives. It was touching to think about.
So we're going to look into that. Anyway, that whole situation was just miraculous. I really hope Ivan will meet with the anziani.

The other guy we talked to was named Marcello and he wasn't super interested but he talked to us for a long time, accepted a Book of Mormon, AND exchanged numbers with the anziani. So maybe he just didn't realize he was interested. He was really cool though, and very nice. :) We also gave a couple Books of Mormon to a couple that was trying to sell used clothes for cheap. They were really nice to us
and we got their numbers! And AFTER all this (because it all happened within the two hours that we were doing gesso) we got ice cream at this super good place called Jackfruit and we met an AMERICAN!!! He was from New Jersey but he lives in Italy with his family because he met his wife in an international school and she's from Turkey. It was awesome. And after that we had a taco salad dinner with the Andersons so it was just a REALLY FUN DAY. Also I was somehow able to tell the Andersons where to go when they drove us to the train station. It was 100% thanks to the Spirit because in reality I had no idea where we were going. So that was sick. The Lord is more reliable than any GPS around.

Also we met a super cool guy named Vittorio and his little toddler Luca and his daughter Viviana and they basically asked us to come over and teach them. We're seeing them on Tuesday and we are PUMPED.

That's all for now :) Have a fantastic week!

P.S. Anziano Matiaco and I passed our road test with Fratello Calabrese. We now have our car back. :)